''Oenopota pyramidalis'',

common name In biology, a common name of a taxon or organism (also known as a vernacular name, English name, colloquial name, country name, popular name, or farmer's name) is a name that is based on the normal language of everyday life; and is often con ...

the pyramid lora, is a species of

sea snail Sea snails are slow-moving marine (ocean), marine gastropod Mollusca, molluscs, usually with visible external shells, such as whelk or abalone. They share the Taxonomic classification, taxonomic class Gastropoda with slugs, which are distinguishe ...

, a marine

gastropod Gastropods (), commonly known as slugs and snails, belong to a large Taxonomy (biology), taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, freshwater, and fro ...

mollusk Mollusca is a phylum of protostomic invertebrate animals, whose members are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 76,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized, making it the second-largest animal phylum after Arthropoda. The ...

in the

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Mangeliidae Mangeliidae is a monophyletic family of small to medium-sized, predatory sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Conoidea. Bouchet, P. (2011). Mangeliidae P. Fischer, 1883. In: MolluscaBase (2016). Accessed through: World Regis ...

Description

The length of the shell varies between 10 mm and 23.5 mm. The shell has usually a rather high

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spire ...

with seven or eight tolerably convex

whorl A whorl ( or ) is an individual circle, oval, volution or equivalent in a whorled pattern, which consists of a spiral or multiple concentric objects (including circles, ovals and arcs). In nature File:Photograph and axial plane floral diagra ...

s, scarcely or not at all shouldered. It shows 13 to 16 sigmoid ribs, fading out about or above the middle of the

body whorl The body whorl is part of the morphology (biology), morphology of the gastropod shell, shell in those gastropod mollusks that possess a coiled shell. The term is also sometimes used in a similar way to describe the shell of a cephalopod mollusk ...

. There are numerous, fine, close revolving lines, sometimes not apparent on the ribs. The color of the shell is pale chestnut, when fresh. The species varies considerably in the elevation of the spire and in ther stoutness, as well as in the development of the ribs.G.W. Tryon (1884) Manual of Conchology, structural and systematic, with illustrations of the species, vol. VI; Philadelphia, Academy of Natural Sciences
(described as ''Bela pyramidalis'')

Distribution

This species occurs in European waters, the Northwest

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the ...

, the

Arctic The Arctic (; . ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the North Pole, lying within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway ( ...

waters of

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

, the

Gulf of Maine The Gulf of Maine is a large gulf of the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of North America. It is bounded by Cape Cod at the eastern tip of Massachusetts in the southwest and by Cape Sable Island at the southern tip of Nova Scotia in the northea ...

. Fossils have been found in

Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), as well as the current and most recent of the twelve periods of the ...

strata of

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

(age range: 0.126 to 0.012 Ma).

References

* * Ström H. (1788). ''Beskrivelse over Norske Insecter, femte Styffe.''. Nye Samling af det Kongelige Danske Videnskabers Selskabs Skrivter 3: 264–300
Couthouy, J.P., 1839. ''Descriptions of new species of Mollusca and shells, and remarks on several polypi found in Massachusetts Bay.'' Boston J. nat. Hist. 2 : 53–111

Möller H.P.C. (1842). ''Index Molluscorum Groenlandiae''. Naturhistorisk Tidsskrift [Copenhagen] 4: 76–97

Leche W. (1878). ''Öfversigt öfver de af svenska expeditionerna till Novaja Semlja och Jenissej 1875 och 1876 insamlade''. Hafsmollusker. Kungliga Svenska Vetenskaps-Akademiens Handlingar, N.F., 16(2): 1–86, pl. 1–2

Sars, G.O. (1878). ''Bidrag til Kundskaben om Norges arktiske Fauna. I. Mollusca Regionis Arcticae Norvegiae''. Oversigt over de i Norges arktiske Region Forekommende Bløddyr. Brøgger, Christiania. xiii + 466 pp., pls 1–34 & I-XVIII
* Abbott, R.T. (1974). ''American Seashells''. 2nd ed. Van Nostrand Reinhold: New York, NY (USA). 663 pp. * Linkletter, L.E. (1977) ''A checklist of marine fauna and flora of the Bay of Fundy''. Huntsman Marine Laboratory, St. Andrews, N.B. 68 p. * Gofas, S.; Le Renard, J.; Bouchet, P. (2001). Mollusca, in: Costello, M.J. et al. (Ed.) (2001). ''European register of marine species: a check-list of the marine species in Europe and a bibliography of guides to their identification''. Collection Patrimoines Naturels, 50: pp. 180–213.
Trott, T.J. 2004. ''Cobscook Bay inventory: a historical checklist of marine invertebrates spanning 162 years.'' Northeastern Naturalist (Special Issue 2): 261–324

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Oenopota pyramidalis pyramidalis Gastropods described in 1788